In recent years, virtual reality technology is being widely applied in the fields of map navigation, smart city, military simulation, etc., and is popular in the modern society since visual effects it created are more consistent with reality. However, these applications are not possible without 3D scene data which is much closer to the real world, thus how to efficiently construct a 3D virtual scene based on the scene of the real world has become one of the hottest issues in computer vision in recent years.
At present, there are many ways to realize 3D scene modeling, for example, by using a professional 3D modeling software, by using binocular imaging technology in computer vision, by using aerial survey technology, etc. For the professional 3D modeling software, such as 3DSMAX and the like, a relative high modeling accuracy can be achieved in the scene modeling process, however, it requires massive manpower and material resource to perform field measurement, resulting in long modeling period and high cost. The modeling technology based on binocular imaging technology, which is generally applied in automatic modeling engineering, has high technological requirements on equipment, and is usually applied to the modeling of small scale scenes, thus the modeling period is relative short, usually lasting for several hours to a few days depending on the complexity of the scene to be modeled, whereas the modeling accuracy thereof is relative low. In comparison, using aerial survey technology can effectively process the scene modeling operation of large scale scenes, and the modeling period is barely constrained by the size of the scenes, but the cost in the earlier and the later stages are both high in that, on one hand, high quality cameras are in demand due to acquisition of data by plane at high altitudes, meanwhile the flight cost is always remaining at a high level; on the other hand, under normal circumstances, the high-altitude photography generally collects a great amount of point cloud data, which requires support of complex algorithm so as to be processed into available model data, the accuracy thereof is merely 10cm. In relative terms, such technology has the worst flexibility due to the fact that it is a great challenge to timely reflect changes in local scene structure to an existing 3D scene considering the limited cost.
Generally speaking, there are some problems in the current modeling method of scene structure in the terms of cost, period, flexibility, accuracy and so on, and hence it is difficult to be effectively applied in the reconstruction of large scale 3D scenes.